Oscar Rodríguez had left his new part-time home of West Palm
Beach, Fla., and was on an airplane headed for his homeland, Venezuela, with an
urgent mission: to vote President Hugo Chávez out of office in a recall
referendum.

The owner of a chain of furniture stores in Venezuela, Rodríguez
believed the leftist firebrand Chávez was destroying the country. In the
last two years, Rodríguez shut down 20 of his 50 stores, and then moved
his wife and two daughters to Florida because he feared for their safety. Now
he commutes between the two countries every week.

I cant sleep at night because its a do-or-die
situation, said Rodríguez, 39, a self-described member of the
Venezuelan oligarchy Chávez loves to lambaste. What he wants for
Venezuela is another Cuba.

The next day, a line of men and women were standing on Avenida Urdaneta
in Caracas a block away from the Miraflores presidential palace. They were
waiting to buy chickens sold by Chávezs government at cut-rate
prices. Workers were passing the bags of poultry down from the back of a truck
to a crowd that adores Chávez as much as Rodríguez despises
him.

In the entire history of Venezuela the best thing that has
happened is this government, said Gregoria Vina, 43, a lawyer who lives
in the working-class neighborhood of La Pastora. Before I used to buy one
chicken. Now I buy three.

Venezuela is the most polarized nation in Latin America today, split
between those who view Chávez as a dangerous demagogue who wants to
impose a Fidel Castro-style communist regime and those who see him as a hero to
the poor masses who is carrying out the most radical social transformation in
Latin America since at least the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in the
early 1980s.

The Aug. 15 recall referendum, billed by some as the first in the world
against a democratically elected president, was supposed to provide a
democratic solution to a standoff that has included a failed coup attempt, an
illegal two-month shutdown of the countrys massive oil industry and a
series of huge street protests.

Chávez won the vote in a landslide and amid a record turnout,
with some lines stretching a mile long and people waiting up to 11 hours to
cast their ballots. But the referendum has not resolved the countrys
tensions and in ways left it worse off and more polarized, according to
observers.

Even though Jimmy Carter and his Carter Center along with the
Organization of American States certified the vote as free and fair, the
opposition leadership is alleging fraud and claiming Chávez stole his
victory -- despite winning by a 59 percent to 41 percent margin, or by 1.7
million votes out of 9.5 million cast. Even the Bush administration, which is
hostile to Chávez, acknowledged he won fairly.

Belief in fraud widespread

Yet the conviction that Chávez stole the election is widespread
among Venezuelas small middle and upper classes. What he did is a
fraud, said Luisa Victoria Arana, 65, a housewife in Caracas
middle-class Las Colinas de Bello Monte neighborhood. Carter is a bandit.
We dont want anything to do with Carter.

Some analysts contend a type of collective neurosis or
hysteria has overtaken large segments of the opposition who refuse
to recognize they lost -- and lost big. They cant see the
reality, said Margarita López Maya, a sociologist at the Central
University of Venezuela. There is a mental block. Its almost
a pathology.

To the outside world, the refusal of the opposition leadership to
acknowledge the results is creating the perception that they are a bunch
of crazy people, said Jesuit priest Arturo Peraza, a human rights lawyer
and a Chávez critic. He compared them to an 8-year-old child who throws
a tantrum when he doesnt get his way. All the credibility they had
theyve thrown away. Its an act of suicide.

The Venezuelan oppositions conviction that Chávez stole the
election was fueled in part by exit polls conducted by a U.S. firm in
conjunction with Sumate (Join Up), a Venezuelan group that helped lead the
drive for the recall referendum. Sumate is the recipient of a $53,400 grant
from the National Endowment for Democracy, a U.S. Congress-funded entity that
has come under fire from Chávez for pumping $1 million a year into
opposition groups.

The exit poll, conducted by Sumate volunteers, showed Chávez
losing by 18 percent, when in reality the exact opposite was true. Word of the
poll spread quickly by cell phone during the afternoon. Then, four hours before
polls finally closed around midnight, New York-based Penn, Schoen & Berland
Associates sent out a news release by fax and e-mail declaring, Exit poll
results show major defeat for Chávez. Venezuelan authorities had
prohibited the release of any exit poll results before official results were
announced.

Sumate deliberately distributed this erroneous exit poll data in
order to build up, not only the expectation of victory, but also to influence
the people still standing in line, Carter said later. Sumate and Penn
Associates insist their poll was accurate, and that the Chávez
government committed massive fraud.

Anti-Chávez television

Beyond that, throughout the day Venezuelas rabidly
anti-Chávez television stations showed long lines of people voting in
affluent anti-Chávez districts, but none of the long lines in
Caracass vast slums. Teodoro Petkoff, a former 60s guerrilla leader
and a prominent Chávez critic, says he called the owner of one station
to urge him to send camera crews to the slums in the interest of fair and
balanced coverage. Petkoff said the owner refused.

It all led to shock and disbelief when electoral authorities announced
on national television at 4 a.m. on Aug. 16 that Chávez had won in a
landslide. In less than an hour, opposition leaders appeared on television
themselves, declaring the vote a fraud.

The oppositions stance has hardened divisions in the country and
created a scenario where extremist right-wing sectors might use the vote as an
excuse to resort to violence, Peraza said. The fraud allegations are an
invitation to radical groups to become more empowered, he said.
That scares me.

Peraza also was worried before the vote that if Chávez lost, some
of his extremist supporters would react violently.

Perazas worst nightmare is Chávezs assassination,
setting off a social uprising similar to El Bogotazo in Colombia in
1948 when popular Liberal party leader Jorge Eliecer Gaitan was assassinated
and three days of bloody riots broke out. A brutal civil war ensued and still
rages today.

Chávezs victory in the referendum was spurred largely by a
series of missions he has launched in the last year or so to carry
out his vision of a radical redistribution of Venezuelas oil income from
a wealthy ruling elite he accuses of pillaging the country to the masses of
slum dwellers and peasants that experts estimate account for up to 80 percent
of the population.

The programs range from a literacy project called Mission Robinson that
has taught 1.2 million people to read and write, to subsidized supermarkets
that sell beans, flour and rice at cheap prices. One of the most popular
programs, Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood), has dispatched 13,500 Cuban
doctors, dentists and optometrists to slums where they live and provide free
24-hour medical attention in blighted areas where such a concept is astonishing
to most residents.

This year alone Chávez is pumping at least $1.7 billion in
revenue from skyrocketing oil prices into health and education programs.
Critics say he bought votes for the referendum. Supporters say it is simply
pork-barrel politics U.S.-style, and the first time a Venezuelan president has
paid serious attention to the poor masses.

Leftist vindication

His backers see Chávezs victory as vindication of a
movement that is rising across Latin America as a backlash to free-market,
neo-liberal economic programs endorsed by the United States and
also known as the Washington Consensus. Leftists have won the
presidencies of Brazil with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and of Argentina with
Nestor Kircher. Indigenous leader Evo Morales nearly won the presidency in
Bolivia in 2002.

Yet to his detractors, Chávez is nothing more than a messianic
demagogue in the tradition of Argentine caudillo or strongman Juan
Perón, offering short-term gratification to the poor masses through
programs that are poorly run and will collapse when the oil money runs out.
Peraza and fellow Jesuit Jose Virtuoso believe Chávez has failed to
attack the major systemic problems plaguing Venezuela such as a corrupt
judicial system, one of the most bloated government bureaucracies in Latin
America, and rising crime and poverty rates.

An often-cited study by the Jesuit-run Andres Bello Catholic University
in Caracas says poverty and critical poverty have leaped by nearly 20 percent
each, to 74 percent and 40 percent of the population, during
Chávezs five years in power. Economist Robert Bottome says the
bolivar has lost 71 percent of its value since 1999, while accumulated
inflation is 187 percent. Former Caracas police chief Ivan Simonovis states
that Caracas suffered 25,000 homicides in the last five years.

The government of Chávez has been a bad government,
said Virtuoso, a political scientist at the Jesuit-run think tank Centro
Gumilla.

Chávezs defects go beyond bad government, though, according
to some critics who contend he is authoritarian or even imposing a communist
dictatorship in Venezuela modeled after his friend Fidel Castro. They say
Chávez is packing the Supreme Court with allies, intimidating the news
media and seizing control of the state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, one
of the top four suppliers of oil to the United States. Of course
hes a communist, said Rodríguez, the businessman who now
lives part-time in West Palm Beach.

But to Chávezs supporters, the accusations are driven by
one basic fact: The poor have taken power in Venezuela for the first time in
the countrys history, and the moneyed classes who live in gated mansions
and travel to Miami for weekend shopping excursions dont like it.

For the affluent sectors of the country the problem is not that
there is poverty, said Edgardo Lander, a Harvard-educated political
scientist at the Central University of Venezuela. The problem is that the
poor are organizing and mobilizing. And that signifies a threat of the
dangerous classes. The dangerous classes are dangerous if they
mobilize, if they act, if they demand.

Lander likens the situation to a high-society party of the white
people, the refined people, the people who know how to speak well, who know how
to hold the crystal cups to drink wine. Suddenly, into the party barge some
people who dont have manners, who are poorly dressed, who havent
taken a bath and smell bad. They grab the food with their hands. They create
the sensation they are taking over the country.

Chávez backers contend that if the economy is not doing well,
its because the opposition has destabilized the country by launching the
failed 2002 coup against Chávez, the illegal two-month oil strike in
December 2002 at a cost of $10 billion, and the constant street protests. Now
that the opposition has resorted to democratic means to try to oust
Chávez, the economy is rebounding and is expected to lead Latin America
this year with 12 percent growth.

Even if the Catholic University figures are accurate, Chávez
supporters assert that the missions have offset much of the economic downturn.
The United Nations says life expectancy has increased under Chávez from
72.8 years to 73.7 years; infant mortality has dropped slightly and literacy
has risen from 90.9 percent to 92.9 percent.

Many people in the slums told NCR that they dont feel their
lives are worse under Chávez, and actually are much better.
Hes the only president who has fought for the poor, said Rosa
Gonzales, 43, who lives in a tin shack in one of the poorest barrios in
Caracas, Nueva Tacagua. Many of her neighbors said they were going to vote for
the first time in their lives in the referendum.

Even critics who question the effectiveness of his programs acknowledge
his brilliance at connecting with the poor masses. The man speaks the
language of the poor, said Peraza. The man touches the souls of the
poor.

Like all of Venezuela, the Jesuits themselves are divided over
Chávez, who grew up in a mud hut and is dark-skinned like most poor
Venezuelans, in contrast to the light-skinned elite. Fr. Miguel Matos, a
prominent leader of Venezuelas popular movement in the barrios, says he
believes the Chávez project, while not perfect, overall is positive.

He says that in contrast to recent Venezuelan presidents who were
corrupt, alcoholic or womanizers, Chávez is a role model of a
teetotaling, personally honest, hard-working leader (he sleeps as little as
three or four hours a night and works seven days a week). Matos adds that given
Venezuelas culture of corruption and other national idiosyncrasies such
as putting recreation first and work second, any reform project will be
difficult to wage and flawed from the beginning.

Opponents march freely

To Chávez supporters, one of the most searing and widely reported
accusations about his project -- that he is installing a communist dictatorship
-- is absurd. Opponents freely march by the hundreds of thousands in the
streets. Critics openly call for coups on television, including some generals
who declared themselves in open rebellion against Chávez during a
months-long occupation of the Plaza Altamira in upscale Altamira. None of them
or the leaders of the 2002 coup or the leaders of the oil strike went to
jail.

What would happen in the United States if a group of active
generals in the army organized a coup against the president of the
republic? asked Lander. Would they have been let free as if nothing
happened?

Can you imagine that in the United States a group of active
generals install themselves in a plaza and declare themselves in disobedience
to the president of the United States and this goes on for months and nothing
happens?

Even some of Chávezs fiercest critics who are concerned
about his autocratic tendencies concede that allegations that he is installing
a Cuba-type dictatorship are far-fetched. This is not a
dictatorship, said Petkoff, the former guerrilla leader. Its
a country with a president who is authoritarian, personalist, a
caudillo, but in the end a democratic country.

Yet Petkoff contends Chávez has made a major strategic blunder by
flaunting his friendship with Castro, inciting mass panic in the moneyed
classes that he plans to install a communist dictatorship even though he has no
plans -- or capacity -- to do so, since the country would never accept it. The
dictatorship allegation is a prominent theme in both Venezuelan and
international news accounts of Chávez. Its an irony that he
has created all these fears with threats he hasnt carried out,
Petkoff said.

He added that Chávez also has frightened and alienated the
wealthy with his constant attacks, calling them squalid ones and a
rancid oligarchy.

Petkoff doesnt know if Chávez can reverse his sour
relations with the elites and achieve a peaceful coexistence. He and other
analysts believe Chávez should reach out to them after his victory and
seek some form of dialogue and reconciliation, including with sectors such as
the business community that are showing signs of accepting his triumph as
valid. They say Chávez must realize that 40 percent of the population
opposes him and his project, take them into account, tone down the
anti-oligarch rhetoric, drop his autocratic tendencies and do a better job of
listening to people who disagree with him.

Need to admit they lost

For its part, the opposition needs to recognize the reality that they
lost overwhelmingly in the referendum, and that they are not the majority in
the country. Many analysts believe the opposition also must renounce
unconstitutional actions, commit itself to playing by democratic rules of the
game, drop its wild accusations of a communist dictatorship, find new
leadership and realize the poor majority can no longer be ignored.

National healing in Venezuela must include a commitment by the fiercely
anti-Chávez and elite-controlled media -- which many say have turned
into political parties -- to return to ethical journalism and present both
sides of the Chávez story, analysts contend. The media has created
an irrational hatred of Chávez with its 24-hours-a-day bombardment
of harsh, mocking and often false attacks, said Matos.

Critics such as Lander and Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and
Policy Research in Washington believe the international media has followed
suit, sending around the world a distorted image of Chávez as a dictator
and a monster and ignoring or downplaying the story of why he enjoys widespread
support. Before the referendum most of the media reported that the vote was too
close to call, even though many independent observers, pollsters and even Wall
Street analysts were predicting a Chávez win.

The international media is presenting day after day grotesque
distortions of what is happening in Venezuela, Lander said.

What seems clear in the wake of Chávezs stunning victory is
that there will be no fundamental retreat in his Bolivarian
Revolution. As he stood on the second-floor balcony of Miraflores Palace
as dawn neared Aug. 16, he addressed a throng of cheering supporters after his
triumph -- his eighth at the polls since 1998 and one of his most important.
Venezuela has changed forever. There is no turning back,
Chávez said. The country will never return to that false democracy
of the past where elites ruled.

Bart Jones is a reporter for Newsday and a former foreign
correspondent for The Associated Press in Venezuela.

Chávez's 'missions' key to his popularity

Dilia Mari Davila grew up in rural Venezuela, and never went to school
or learned to read and write. At age 8 she started working as a live-in
maid.

But now, at 34, Davila has become literate. She is among at 1.2 million
Venezuelans who have taken part in one of President Hugo Chávezs
premiere programs to help the poor, Mission Robinson.

A lot of time I couldnt help my son [with his school work]
because I didnt know how, said Davila, who lives in La Vega, a
Caracas shantytown. He had to learn almost alone.

Now Davila can not only read and write, but she is learning how to
divide and multiply. She has reached fourth-grade level since joining the
program a year ago, and even dreams of attending a university some day.

Davila is among the 5.6 million Venezuelans who swept Chávez to
an extraordinary victory Aug. 15 in a recall referendum organized by opponents
who hoped to end his presidency. The story of her success in the classroom and
of her barrios emergence as a showcase of Chávezs efforts to
transform Venezuela explains why he was able to beat back the recall.

She lives in the Sector A, La Casita (The Little House) section of La
Vega, which has attracted visitors and journalists from around the world,
although no reporters from the elite-controlled anti-Chávez Venezuelan
media, said community leader Maria Alejandra Mucura. An NCR reporter was
the first journalist from the United States to visit, she added.

Besides Mission Robinson, the barrio also is home to a Mission Ribas
program, which offers high school diplomas to adults who dropped out of school.
Beyond that, Mission Sucre permits impoverished students to continue to
university studies.

A new red-brick hectagonal building on the barrios main street is
home to Mission Barrio Adentro (Inside the Neighborhood), where a Cuban doctor
lives and offers 24-hour-a-day free medical care. A couple blocks away is a
Casa Alimentaria (Nutrition House), a local home where volunteers
cook nutritious hot lunches every day for about 150 people in extreme poverty.
The government provides the food, pots and dishes. Up a hill, residents can buy
discounted food at one of the thousands of government-subsidized supermarkets
called Mission Mercal now operating around the country.

Residents also have organized a committee to oversee the
communitys participation in Chávezs urban land reform, under
which people will receive titles to their homes for the first time. Many of
Venezuelas slums started as invaded areas years ago where
people simply moved in and built houses of cardboard at first. Property titles
will allow homeowners to take out bank loans and receive other benefits.

Critics dismiss the programs as populism, contending they
will collapse when prices for Venezuelas main export, oil, drop. They say
they dont get to the root of Venezuelas problems, are poorly
planned and are dictated by Chávez from his perch at Miraflores
presidential palace.

But many people in the slums say they love the programs, and that they
have sparked a level of organizing theyve never seen. Most of the
educational programs were imported from Cuba, which has a higher literacy rate
than the United States.

We opened the door to the process [initiated by Chávez]. We
feel identified with it, said Mucura, 34, who also runs a small,
government-subsidized food store out of her home. She added: I think this
is the most democratic country that there can be in the world.

Santa Martínez, 46, runs the Alimentary House, teaches in Mission
Robinson and studies in Mission Ribas for her high school diploma. She says she
left school 20 years ago in the 9th grade, and now cant wait to get to
class every day. Its so exciting, she said.

La Vega isnt the only shantytown undergoing a transformation. In
the sprawling 23 de Enero slum, activist Juan Contreras said the community
library now has a dozen computers that offer free Internet service to
residents. Running water that used to arrive every four or five days now comes
every day. And residents in huge Soviet-style buildings also have direct gas
connections to their apartments. Before they had to go out and buy small
tanks.

Contreras laughed at suggestions that Chávez has destroyed
Venezuela. If the country is so bad and people are dying of hunger with
parasites in their stomachs, why did they go out and wait on line to vote for
Chávez? he asked.